The organizers behind a White House petition to legalize phone unlocking are making one last push for 100,000 signatures before the petition expires on Saturday.

The petition, submitted to the White House's "We the People" online petition site, calls on the administration to make unlocking cell phones legal. It has gained more than 86,000 e-signatures, but needs 100,000 or more by Feb. 23 for a formal White House response.

The Copyright Office reviews the rules on unlocking (and jailbreaking) every three years, as required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This time around, regulators found that "there are ample alternatives to circumvention. That is, the
marketplace has evolved such that there is now a wide array of unlocked phone options available to consumers."

The creator of the White House petition, Sina Khanifar, disagreed. "Consumers will be forced to pay exorbitant roaming fees to make calls while traveling abroad. It reduces consumer choice, and decreases the resale value of devices that consumers have paid for in full," he wrote on his petition.

Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), meanwhile, argued that the decision will open up regular mobile phone users to carrier lawsuits.

Khanifar has some experience with lawsuits. He was sued by Motorola in 2005 for selling software that unlocked their phones.

"I started unlocking phones after a typical entrepreneurial experience: I had a problem and was forced to find a solution. I'd brought a cell phone from California to use while at college in the UK, but quickly discovered that it wouldn't work with any British cell networks," Khanifar wrote in a blog post. "The phone was locked. Strapped for cash and unable to pay for a new phone, I figured out how to change the Motorola firmware to unlock the device."

Ultimately, Khanifar started selling his unlocking software via Cell-Unlock.com, a business that picked up with the release of the Motorola Razr. At that point, Khanifar said he received a cease and desist from Motorola, which claimed he was violated the DMCA and could face up to $500,000 in fines and five years in jail per offense.

"My immediate reaction was to shut down the business," Khanifar wrote, but he started working with Jennifer Granick, founder of Stanford's Cyberlaw Clinic, who has also held posts at the EFF and the Center for Internet and Society. She battled the suit pro bono and ultimately got Motorola to back down and secured a win on unlocking overall.

"In the year after helping me with my case, Jennifer Granick fought for an exemption from the DMCA for unlocking phones, and in November 2006 it was granted," Khanifar wrote. "That exemption was in place for 6 years, until the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office decided to remove it this past November."

Khanifar has since passed control of Cell-Unlock.com to his brother, and the site is not taking any orders from the U.S. right now. Khanifar's main focus at the moment is OpenSignal, which provides crowd-sourced cell carrier coverage maps.

The White House recently increased the threshold for an official response from 25,000 to 100,000 after a number of questionable petitions (see the slideshow above) easily hit that 25,000 mark.

Of course, even if the unlocking petition surpasses 100,000 e-signatures, that does not guarantee that the White House will back a reversal of the Copyright Office's decision. But it will be forced to formally address the issue rather than deferring to the Copyright Office.

The unlocking ruling, meanwhile, does not affect jailbreaking, which the Copyright Office found to be legal for smartphones.

UPDATE: The petition successfully topped 100,000 signatures Wednesday night, meaning the White House is required to respond. Khanifar said work on the issue will continue via fixthedmca.org; sign up there for updates about this campaign.

Chloe Albanesius has been with PCMag.com since April 2007, most recently as Executive Editor for News and Features. Prior to that, she worked for a year covering financial IT on Wall Street for Incisive Media. From 2002 to 2005, Chloe covered technology policy for The National Journal's Technology Daily in Washington, DC. She has held internships at NBC's Meet the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from American University...
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